Dragon's blood

It was "about first-drink time," as the captain of the Tsuen-Chau, bound for Shanghai and Japan ports, observed to his friend Cesare Domenico, a good British subject born at Mal...

A gray smudge trailing northward showed where the Fa-Hien--Scottish Oriental, sixteen hundred tons--was disappearing from the pale expanse of ocean. The sampan drifted landward...

The desert was sometimes Gobi, sometimes Sahara, but always an infinite stretch of sand that floated up and up in a stifling layer, like the tide. Rudolph, desperately choked, c...

"Wutzler was missing last night," said Heywood, lazily. He had finished breakfast, and lighted a short, fat, glossy pipe. "Just occurred to me. We must have a look in on him. Po...

Night, in that maze of alleys, was but a more sinister day. The same slant-eyed men, in broken files, went scuffing over filthy stone, like wanderers lost in a tunnel. The same...

He was spared that inconvenience. The untimely rain and cold, some persons said, the few days of untimely heat following, had drowned or dried, frozen or burnt out, the seeds of...

"Don't chop off a hen's head with a battle-axe." Heywood, still with a malicious, friendly quirk at the corners of his mouth, held in his fretful pony. Rudolph stood bending a w...

Rudolph paced his long chamber like a wolf,--a wolf in summer, with too thick a coat. In sweat of body and heat of mind, he crossed from window to window, unable to halt.

The long-coated boy scuffed away, across the chunam floor, and disappeared in the darkness. Heywood submitted his head once more to the nimble hands of his groom, who, with hors...

Not till after dinner, that evening, did Rudolph rouse from his stupor. With the clerk, he lay wearily in the upper chamber of Heywood's house. The host, with both his long legs...

He was swarming up, quiet as a thief, when his fingers clawed the bare plaster. The ladder hung from the square end of a protruding beam, above which there were no more rungs. H...

"Quite right," said Mr. Forrester, tugging his gray moustache, and studying the floor. "Obviously. Rigmarole or not, your plan is thoroughly sound: stock one house, and if the p...

Beyond the scant greenery of Heywood's garden--a ropy little banyan, a low rank of glossy whampee leaves, and the dusty sage-green tops of stunted olives--glared the river. Wide...

The last of the sunlight streamed level through a gap in the western ridges. It melted, with sinuous, tender shadows, the dry contour of field and knoll, and poured over all the...

At the top of the nunnery stairs, Rudolph met them with awkward ceremony, and with that smiling air of encouragement which a nurse might use in trying cheerfully to deceive a si...

Rudolph's mission began quietly, with a glimpse which he afterward recalled as incredibly peaceful. Two of the women, at least, showed no fear. In the living-room sat Mrs. Earle...

The white men peered from among the oil-jars, like two of the Forty Thieves. They could detect no movement, friendly or hostile: the black head lodged there without stirring. Th...

He never believed that they could hold the northeast corner for a minute, so loud and unceasing was the uproar. Bullets spattered sharply along the wall and sang overhead, mixed...

This new danger, working below in the solid earth, had thrown Rudolph into a state of sullen resignation. What was the use now, he thought indignantly, of all their watching and...

This grudging praise--in which, moreover, Heywood tamely acquiesced--was his only comment. On Rudolph it had singular effects: at first filling him with resentment, and almost m...

The lowdah would have set his dirty sails without delay, for the fair wind was already drooping; but at the first motion he found himself deposed, and a usurper in command, at t...